Okay, I'll admit that I'm likely going to be the only one who recognizes the quarter century anniversary of one given article from a popular news magazine that often times borders on being a tabloid.
Most would not consider articles by People magazine as overly serious or probing.
Yet, there was one article that was published in this magazine exactly one quarter of a century ago that had a huge impact on me as a teen, and so I wanted to acknowledge it here. The writing, combined with the photography, captured my imagination.
The subject of the article was itself a source of fascination to me: South Africa, during the days of apartheid. Yes, apartheid was ending, but it had not ended. Not yet, anyway. Sure, FW DeKlerk, the nation's president, had announced in February that apartheid as a policy had failed, and he had announced that changes would come. To that end, he had also ended the ban that had long been imposed upon several organizations, including the African National Congress (ANC), and released political prisoners - most famously, Nelson Mandela.
But South Africa was a land in turmoil, and still officially a racist state, even if those announcements of reform had been well meaning. Whites and blacks were not yet equal in the eyes of the law, and there are huge and glaring de facto inequalities that stubbornly persist right to the present day.
Back then, in the eighties and early nineties, it was the big moral issue of the day, and the big exception to the general spirit of a lack of political activism (at least on the left) that prevailed during the eighties.
I was quite taken by the drama of it all, and remember reading any material that I happened to stumble upon about it.
One of the best - one of the very best (to me, at least) - was this article. It was written in language so vivid, that I could picture myself there. And I remember reading that magazine while going with my mom to her job in the big city (I don't remember why, but I used to do this fairly frequently). Although I was already a high schooler, a part of me still was a bit intimidated by what I perceived as the seriousness of adult culture, particularly when it came to rubbing elbows with them on the bus to New York. They were dressed so professionally, and so many of them remained silent throughout the trip. Many of them read serious newspapers, like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
It was all a bit overwhelming at the time.
But I read an article that really kind of captured my imagination, about one little town in South Africa that seemed to be right on the front lines of the apartheid struggle in the country. Some residents there wanted to turn back the clock, and reintroduce a stricter version of apartheid, while others were looking towards a new age, and a new South Africa.
It was a fascinating topic, alright. And South Africa had always been a fascinating country to me. From what I heard, South Africa was a stunningly beautiful nation with a lot of resources. That seemed to make the human drama of a strictly enforced, legal racial divide and the polarization that it caused there particularly tragic.
This article brought that South Africa to life for me, more than almost anything else that I had written at the time. The people and town that is described beautifully here feel very real because of how well this article was written. it almost felt like I was there, and it was one of the first times that I remember feeling an appreciation for how a piece was written. Read how this article by Michael Ryan (writing for People Magazine for this particular piece) opens:
The green veld of the Transvaal, rolling gently out from Johannesburg, appears to be a land of peace and amity. In the endless open fields, just a few people move slowly through the day, tending to no obvious business. Driving into Ventersdorp, a little farming town that wouldn't seem out of place in the U.S. Midwest, you proceed up its main street, past filling stations, shops and churches, and nothing breaks the placid mood. Then you notice the small brown building on the left; in its doorway hangs a banner with bent, angular black lines in a white circle against a red background. It is not what it seems at first glance, though clearly its designers meant to remind you of another symbol when they created this one. In fact, it only looks like a swastika.
That is a very descriptive first paragraph, and it makes you feel like you are there, traveling with the author (at least it did, and still does, for me). But Ryan's writing also brought to life the paradox of the whites, particularly of Afrikaners, when it came to race, as he describes the black section of Ventersdorp, the town that he is examining in this article. Once again, you almost could feel like you are there:
Finally, there is "the location," the area on a hill just beyond town, where the blacks must live. Some of the houses are compact brick structures—lacking plumbing or electricity, but presentable; these sit closest to the road. Few white people ever pull off into the unpaved byways that thread back from these bungalows to the maze of wood and cardboard and corrugated metal shacks beyond. Those who do, see a poverty and neglect that is jarring in contrast with the tidiness of the rest of the town. And when one stops to engage passersby in conversation, there is deference, apprehension and perhaps an undertone of contempt. People whose English is fluent when the conversation begins suddenly find the language incomprehensible when they are asked about politics and the life of the town. "I do not know about the political atmosphere, so I cannot comment on that," one man says warily. Adds another: "I do not know what is Mandela; I have never seen him." Then there is Peter Modupe".
Ryan describes Eugene Terre Blanche, the leader of a neo-Fascist organization that is reminiscent of the Nazi Party. As you just read Ryan's description, the symbol and flag of his AWB is transparently reminiscent of the Nazi Party of Germany, and Terre Blanche's fierce, blazing blue eyes, as well as his ability to electrify crowds with his speeches, seems reminiscent of Hitler. Ryan brings to life the appeal of Terre Blanche to sympathetic Afrikaners:
Terre Blanche is a mesmerizing speaker, his brawny forearms slapping at the desktop to reinforce his points as his massive Irish wolfhound, Wolf, sits by his side. His electric brown-shirted presence at hundreds of rallies across the country has made Terre Blanche, a 46-year-old farmer, a national figure in this moment of South Africa's crisis. From this little building, he runs the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, and with his message of armed struggle against black power he has built an organization that, experts suggest, may speak for up to 10 percent of white South Africans. "I only want those parts of the country that are the property of the Boer people," he says. "For that, I will fight and die."
Ryan uses the words of the people he interviews against them, without their quite realizing it. Here is then Deputy Mayor of Ventersdorp, Bob Hardy, expressing his patronizing lack of understanding at why so many outside of South Africa condemn the racial tensions there:
A retired civil servant, he seems genuinely confused when an American asks whether racial problems bedevil his town. Ventersdorp, he explains, "has a population of 2,000 people, and there are about 7,000 blacks. Race relations are very, very good here. There's no trouble." When an American uses the word that right-wing South African officials disdain most—apartheid—Hardy's response is disingenuous. "I don't understand the definition of apartheid," he says. "It's never been here. It's the same as in a household—the parents have their place, the children have their rooms. It's as simple as that."
Ryan continues the article with more of what Hardy has to say, and pointing out, importantly, that which he does not speak of:
He somehow neglects to mention that the town council on which he sits has just defied the national government's policy and voted to reintroduce "petty apartheid," the practice of banning blacks from public facilities such as rest rooms, the town library—even the town hall. To the Deputy Mayor, Ventersdorp is an oasis of tranquillity. "It's only a little minority here that cares about politics and parties," he says. "Average people here don't know Mandela and the African National Congress. I don't think the Afrikaner Resistance Movement is very important, either. Sometimes a person gets up and shouts, and everybody applauds. That's all."
Ryan concludes the article essentially by describing the end of his day at Ventersdorp quite literally:
The afternoon grows late in Ventersdorp. The church people clean up after completing their lunchtime charity. Peter Modupe goes back to walking the streets of the location, talking to friends and whiling the day away. Eugene Terre Blanche leaves town; tonight he will address a cheering, stomping rally of a thousand or so supporters—many of them clad in brown shirts like his—in a town hundreds of miles north, near the Botswana border. An American visitor leaves Ventersdorp convinced that, in one of these faces, he has seen the future of South Africa. The unanswerable question, of course, is which one.
And so, Ryan's article closes. But I kept reading it, especially certain parts of it, over and over again. Years later, I turned back to this article, and read it with new eyes, being much more familiar with the writing process itself, and remembering how this article had made an impact on me back when I was just a teenager on a day off from school, riding on a bus that made me feel out of place, and reading an article that allowed me to travel far away, yet recognize many of the same flaws in that faraway land that still existed much closer to home.
If you would be interested in reading the entire article online, do yourself a favor and click on the link below. It is a great article, even if it is of a time and describing specific situations that no longer exist. Apartheid is over, at least officially. Legalized segregation ended in South Africa. Terre Blanche was murdered a few years ago. The nation has changed, and so has the town of Ventersdorp. Yet, this article stands as a brilliant example of what effective writing can look like, and how well it can describe a situation, showing the people involved with vivid descriptions that make you feel as if you are there with the author. I strongly recommend taking a look. It's worth it!
The link does not include the photographs that accompanied the article in that issue of People Magazine, so I took some pictures of my copy and included them here (see below):
Hope Meets Hatred in South Africa by Michael Ryan of People Magazine, April 9, 1990
The People of Ventersdorp Struggle to Face the Future, and One Another, as Their Nation Is Reborn
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20117303,00.html
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